Of Ash and Steel

Of Ash and Steel was provided by tinyBuild for review. Thank you!

Of Ash and Steel presents itself as an unapologetic throwback to RPGs of yore, where UI elements were limited, combat was challenging, and the sense of exploration was unmatched. It's certainly hit the mark with some of its manifesto, and I think it's a game that will prove quite divisive.

Of Ash and Steel starts with a rather lengthy prologue, in which we're introduced to our main player character, a cartographer. We also get a tease of how the game's quest system works, where you have to pay attention to dialogue and notes to find out what to do, because beyond some simple text telling you the objective, there is no path or marker for objectives to tell you where to go.

At first, this is a bit of a novelty; it's almost pleasant not to be told where to go all the time. But the game offers no alternative routes to your destination. You can't ask the NPCs where specific locations are that you're trying to find, and the journal you have often doesn't tell you either, and so you frequently find yourself wandering aimlessly trying to find your objective. It ultimately quickly loses its appeal.

As someone who enjoys playing video games to relax, Of Ash and Steel does pretty much everything in its power to prevent that. It has all the standard RPG elements, leveling up, quests, and combat, but makes them as difficult to use as possible. Learning skills must be done with skill points, but only if you find someone to teach you that skill, have the gold to pay, and have the right ability stats to unlock it. Quests give you an objective, but no notes (or vague notes) of where the objective is or how to get there.

Of Ash and Steel has decent combat, but it does feel a little stilted. You can easily get caught in animations that can't be cancelled, and when your stamina runs low, this is even more of a problem, as your animations play much more slowly. Even worse, the AI pathfinding (for both friendlies and enemies) can get really messed up, resulting in NPCs randomly walking away from you or escort missions failing to complete as friendly NPCs can't path correctly. NPCs also only ever move at a walking pace, and if you run ahead, they will stop. It's nostalgic in all the wrong ways for me.

I also encountered an issue with "friendly fire"; if you're fighting alongside a friend and accidentally hit them with your weapon, they will turn on you and try to kill you, even if you're fighting closely against the same enemy, where hitting them is very likely. The saving grace is that if you can escape them, once they lose aggro, they don't stay hostile, but it's an annoying feature to have in the game.

The game is also quite challenging. If you aren't up for a frankly brutal experience, you will want to play on the easiest difficulty. Otherwise, it's a lot of parrying, dodging, and doing pitiful amounts of damage to very strong enemies that will kill you in 2 or 3 hits. I found myself just running past most enemies if I could. You also cannot change the difficulty for a save game once you select it, which is a shame, as you may not expect how tough the game is going into it, as the first bit of combat is a good hour or so into the game.

The storyline is decent. I have heard reports that the protagonist is uninteresting or bland, but I can't say I found that to be true. They're someone who is out of their depth, being hunted down, and with little knowledge of why or how to stop it. Of Ash and Steel at least does a brutally honest job of portraying that, making me feel aimless and overwhelmed most of the time.

What is somewhat bland, though, is the world. While parts of it are well presented, the city, in particular, seems to have many empty houses that serve no purpose. You can walk into the interior of many buildings, but some have sparse furniture and often no one living in them, which feels a little odd, like the developers planned for something to be there but ran out of time to actually do it.

The graphics, at least, are pretty nice. I particularly enjoyed the wind effect, which makes the grass move, and isn't something we see given much attention in many games. Sounds are a mixed bag; both the music and voice lines can get a little repetitive. You will hear someone say, "Why is he wearing that junk?" almost every minute as you walk through villages and the city.

The saving grace here is the price. At just $30, this is a good-sized experience, with plenty of quests and content. If you are after an unapologetically brutal RPG, you should give this one a look and see if it's for you.

Of Ash and Steel - Steam Deck Performance

Unfortunately, Of Ash and Steel doesn't run on the Steam Deck. This is likely due to the game's high RAM/VRAM usage. The initial loading screen to enter gameplay uses over 6GB of VRAM, even on the lowest settings, and the Steam Deck crashes back to SteamOS shortly thereafter. Given how far out of the Steam Deck's comfort zone this is, we probably won't see the game playable on the Steam Deck.

You can technically get into the game if you use something like CryoUtilities to set the swap file size to 32GB, but the game devolves into a stuttering mess once you reach the open-world portion of the game, so it's still unplayable.

アクセシビリティ：

Of Ash and Steel doesn't have much accessibility. You can enable subtitles and rebind controls. The game prides itself on not hand-holding the player, so there is minimal UI in the way of objectives and where to go to progress. Combat is also very challenging and requires quick reactions.

結論

Of Ash and Steel has some technical issues that can exacerbate the difficulty, but once these are fixed, we should have a very challenging, if not brutal, Action RPG on our hands that is likely to be enjoyed by a certain crowd. You can't really argue with the price for the amount of content you're getting, either. And while it isn't great on the Steam Deck, it's still an enjoyable game and one worth checking out if you are a fan of old-style RPGs.

このレビューはPC版に基づいています。

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